Travel Tuesday: Throwback 2018 Disneyland Trip, Day 3

Welcome back to Travel Tuesday! Today I will be sharing with you all our first day at California Adventures! If you missed the first two posts in this Disneyland throwback, you can find them here:

Travel Tuesday: Throwback 2018 Disneyland Trip, Day 1

Travel Tuesday: Throwback 2018 Disneyland Trip, Day 2

Tuesday, November 6, 2018: Day 3

Tuesday was our first California Adventures day and we were very excited! My son was a big Cars fan so we were very excited to finally see Radiator Springs! The park didn't open until 9:00 again, so we didn't have to get up quite so early. 

Ready for another fun day!

We made it through security fine and were in line at the gates about 45 minutes early. I don't remember exactly what time they let everyone in, but we went right over to Soarin' so we'd be ready to get that out of the way.

My son wasn't big enough for that, so we had to use Rider's Switch. It ended up taking about an hour for both me and my husband to ride it back to back, which was a lot longer than we expected; but while my son and I waited for my husband I got a Starbucks from Fiddler, Fifer & Practical Café and I got my son a cake pop :)

After that we had a Fast Pass for Toy Story Midway Mania so we made our way to Pixar Pier. I love Pixar movies and that was a cute area! Midway Mania is always a fun ride too (although much more difficult when you are trying to teach a 2-year-old what to do ;) )

Wall-E is my favorite Pixar movie! Of course I had to get a picture of the sign with my matching shirt :)

After that we went on the Pixar Pal-A-Round which was another of my son's favorites! We played it safe and went in the non-swinging gondola ;)

Then was the Golden Zephyr which was fun but very bright in the direct sun!

Then we had an 11:00 reservation at Lamplight Lounge. That was the perfect time as the restaurant was just opening there weren't many people there yet. We got a table right on the water and had the perfect view of Pixar Pier! World of Color was being refurbed during the time we were there, so we got to see the maintenance people working on that.

Perfect view! Haha and my son loved the coasters they had there :)

I think my husband and I both got the burgers, which were good, and we ended with the donuts for dessert. Yum!

After that, we made our way over to The Little Mermaid ride and then went back to the hotel for an afternoon rest. That was such a game changer for our trip! When we went to Disney World back in 2014, we did each park open to close for a week and we were wiped out by the end of the trip. Adding the mid-day rest helped so much that we decided to add on a 5th park day the next day instead of doing a rest day. I'll talk more about that in my next post.

After our rest, it was back to the park for some fun in Radiator Springs! My husband and I took turns doing the single-rider line in Radiator Springs Racers which was so much fun! 

My son brought little Mater with him to the park :)

While my husband did that, I took my son to meet Mater (which went a lot better than meeting Pluto and Mickey!). We also saw DJ and Cruz Ramirez driving by, which my son loved too :)

This meet and greet went WAY better than the face characters from the day before!

We rounded up the land by riding Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters and Mater's Junkyard Jamboree which were both really fun! We got some pretty cute pictures of my son on these rides on our next California Adventures day so stay tuned!

After we were done with Cars Land, we decided to get a spot for Paint the Night Parade. It was the second to last night of the parade, so we wanted to make sure we got good seats for it! We ended up getting a spot right across from the Silly Swings and right up against a fence, so we had our own private little nook, which was nice. We let my son watch Cars on our phones and we each took turns walking around and doing some shopping. We got dinner from the Corn Dog Castle, which was really good!

I just love the parks at night!

Then we saw the parade which was so good! We all loved it and my son's happy smiles throughout just made the trip!

He was so happy!

The park was closed by the time the parade was over, so we walked back to our hotel and went to bed to get rested for day 4. Make sure you come back for that recap- we had a character breakfast at Storytellers Café and had another fun day at Disneyland!